The consumer and entertainment landscape dominates everything, but it’s nothing but wallpaper. The real problem is that it (the consumer and entertainment landscape) is the only wallpaper — every other form of competition for people’s attention and imaginations has been vanquished.
“Why does language subvert me, subvert my seniority, my medals, my oldness, whenever it gets a chance? What does language have against me—me that has been good to it, respecting its little peculiarities and nicilosities, for sixty years? …What do ‘years’ have against me? Why have they stuck stones in my kidneys, devaluated my tumulosity, retracted my hair? …Where does ‘hair’ go when it dies?”
Donald Barthelme | “A Picture History of the War”